The Bad Batch: One Shot Collection

Astaria

The Bad Batch picks up a Jedi survivor a while after the Kamino disaster. They're used to losing now, but gaining is still something new. (Or, the five times their new member takes care of them, and the one time they take care of her.)

Being the leader of Clone Force 99 can just as often be completely exhausting. Yeah, unexpected, and unpleasant missions are entirely bound to happen. Hunter expects it, was trained for It, and is usually unphased, but he's still decidedly shaken and irritated from the entire...

Treasure hunt.

He didn't want to go, but he was too afraid to say no. They wanted to go, and Hunter has entirely forgotten how to put his foot down and say no, which is ridiculous, but he tries so hard to keep them happy.

"Worn out?" Astaria guesses, smiling sympathetically as she sits next to him and hands over a cup of caf.

Hunter downs it with a quiet groan. "Something like that."

She chuckles lightly. "Yeah. I got that feeling a lot back in the war. I bet Echo did, too. Watching over kids, trying to keep people out of trouble, i – it's not easy. I must've driven my master crazy back in the day." And then her face falls from wistful to hurt, and she quickly shoves it all away.

It makes Hunter's own ache a bit, a feeling he knows so, so well from what happened with Crosshair, and all over then he's seen enough of the things she's said about it. He wishes he could make it better, but he can't even protect his own family. All he can do is... try to give her another one.

"But," Astaria continues softly, "That mission was wild."

"Very," Hunter mutters into his mostly empty cup.

She chuckles lightly, laying her hand on his forearm. He meets her gaze, the bright green of her eyes. Non-brown eyes are still so strange to look at, look into – Hunter has only seen brown on humans until leaving Kamino. A few years, and he still finds things that fascinate him.

Or maybe it's just... her.

And not exactly a feeling he knows how to touch. So he just... won't for a little wild longer.

"I don't know how to say no to the kid," Hunter admits, as blunt as he has in him.

"Omega? I know, she's – she's so sweet. But curiosity can just as soon get you killed." Astaria gnaws on her lip a moment, the first reminder that, at the end of the day, she's still a teenager. Even if she's nearly an adult, she's still young. So is he. Too young. "I, uh..." She tails off slowly, fumbling, too new and uncertain to say it, just like him. He prefers not to think.

Hunter definitely doesn't want to think about how somehow being around Astaria make shim feel vaguely warm and fluttery inside, all things he knows he can never have, not something he even knew he was missing.

"I know you're upset about that, and I think it's fair," Astaria continues. "You... uh, you know you can tell me anything, right?"

He does, because she... isn't one of his brothers. She's not someone he needs to be strong for, so ranks are different, but it's still confusing. Everything about her is relatively confusing.

"I do," he confirms with a soft sigh, though this, right now is something he doesn't quite know how to talk about.

Astaria waits.

Hunter sighs again, and finally concedes. Talking, actually talking about things is something he's stopped doing after Crosshair. He used to talk to Tech a lot, or Echo, or really any of his brothers, but then some things happened that they just couldn't talk about, and... he sort of forgot how.